One Core Element of Worry and its “Cure”

No one is immune from worry. We live in a scary world where bad things happen and good things are not always guaranteed. Take a moment and consider what you are facing this week. Did you sense a degree of anxiety creep into your heart? Symptoms vary based upon the degree of worry. You may experience a loss of appetite, racing thoughts, sadness, paranoia, temptations to check out or become over-controlling.

Statistics show that the most prescribed medications are those for anxiety. According to the National Institute of Mental Health, 40 million Americans (about one in six) are suffering from some kind of anxiety disorder. Treatment for anxiety accounts for nearly a quarter of all mental-health care (m.theatlantic.com, Scott Stossel, 12/22/2013).

The core of worry is not easy to diagnose because we are complex beings. Nature, nurture and psychological/spiritual influences are all fair game. Some of us are more prone to worry than others for a variety of reasons. Regardless, we all worry. Sin and suffering are realities and this world is not what it is supposed to be. If you struggle with worry, it is because you are a human being.

What can we learn from Scripture as we seek to respond to our own anxieties? In Matthew 6:25-34, Jesus highlights many reasons we worry. I'll highlight one.

As you read the passage, Jesus implies one of the reasons we worry is because we can't control the future. Notice the use of the future tense; what will you eat, drink or wear. Depending on your context, your worries can be more immediate and focus on physical survival. If you are relatively confident that your basic needs will be met, your worries could spill over into what you might call "psychological needs". Will people like me? Do I measure up? Will my spouse be faithful? Will our kids turn out okay? Will we have enough money to retire? I wonder how and when I will die? The questions can be endless or there may be one or two that grab you and won't let go.

If worry is driven by an uncertainty of the future, consider how Scripture addresses this. One of the broadest themes in the Bible is the future. Christianity's view of history is linear, not circular like many other world-views and belief systems. There is a beginning and an end to human history as we know it. Therefore, the Bible is packed with promises. From Genesis to Revelation, the Bible is brimming with hope. Promises are about the future. Read all the “I will’s” that God utters through the prophets and apostles. One of the biggest promises in Scripture is, "I am making everything new." This is re-iterated in the last book of the Bible (Revelation 21-22).

All of these promises, says Paul, find their “Amen” in Christ (2 Corinthians 1:20). What does that mean? Jesus is the first fruits of what is to come. His resurrection is proof, a sign and a guarantee that all of God's promises will come to fruition. This future certainty is supposed to intersect with our lives in the here and now. In other words, if you belong to this God, He's got you covered. He's got your back! Your future is already wrapped up and nothing can change that. If that is true, what kind of future does God have in store for you? Here is one very important part of your certain future. Consider these words from I John 3:2-3,

Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when Christ appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.  All who have this hope in him purify themselves, just as he is pure.

The entire trajectory of your life is ultimately to be conformed into the likeness of Christ. Nothing can stop this from happening. Because you belong to Him, you will one day be like Him in character. Therefore, we can live one day at a time and carry today's troubles. The great hymn writer and pastor John Newton put it this way,

I compare the troubles which we have to undergo in the course of the year—to a great bundle of sticks, far too large for us to lift. But God does not require us to carry the whole bundle at once. He mercifully unties the bundle, and gives us first one stick, which we are to carry today; and then another, which we are to carry tomorrow, and so forth. We can easily manage our troubles, if we would only carry the trouble appointed for each day. But the load will be too heavy for us—if we carry yesterday's burden over again today, and then add the burden of tomorrow to the weight, before we are required to bear it.

It’s reasonable to worry. Today is filled with challenges. But just take on today’s concerns, not yesterday’s or tomorrow's. You have enough on your plate. You also have one who knows what is on your plate and what you need in order to move forward today. That doesn't mean it will be easy but it does mean you have hope to press into today because you know the end of the story already.

Copyright © 2014 Timothy S. Lane. All rights reserved.

Even in Crises, the Church Must be Involved

In the event that a person or couple needs more skilled help and intensive intervention from resources outside of the local church, they will still need the supporting and nurturing involvement of wise brothers and sisters in Christ to walk with them on a daily basis.

•    Don’t Outsource By Default:

There is nothing unbiblical about seeking outside assistance. Just because you feel overwhelmed by a counseling opportunity, don’t immediately think you must outsource your care. When a church immediately out-sources counseling it misses the opportunity to grow both individually and as a community. When I was a pastor, I remember facing a very challenging counseling case. I immediately got on the phone and called a respected professional counselor who recognized and emphasized the importance of the local church. Why did I do this? Because he had more experience than I did. After describing the situation, he said that this would be a very challenging but rewarding person to counsel. He was right! I grew as a pastor, my family grew as we reached out to her and the church grew as this person was welcomed into meaningful, redemptive relationships with other Christians. Had we immediately outsourced the care of this individual to a professional, we would have missed the opportunity to grow in love for other people and she would have potentially missed receiving care from the body of Christ.

•    Recognize the Power of the Normal Means of Grace

Remember that even if you send someone for outside help, the person still spends very little time with a professional counselor; usually 1-2 hours a week. While those hours can be very helpful, they are hardly enough to give the person the complete help that they need for the other 166 hours of the week. I recently spoke to a pastor who frequently out-sources his counseling to a professional in his area. I asked him a few questions that revealed a typical pattern. He said that nearly half of the people he refers never follow through and of the half that do, very few go consistently. Why do we have a tendency to minimize the power of the normal means of grace in a person’s life? The Word of God, prayer, being in the company of other believers, corporate worship, the sacraments, and service to others? While I don’t want to minimize the need for more skilled help, a person will always need daily exposure to the means of grace. If you do refer someone, make sure they are following through and don’t assume that is all they need.

•    Seek Outside Help When You are Over Your Head

While you don’t want to out-source counseling by default, you do want to recognize your own limitations of time, wisdom, and experience. Thankfully, the body of Christ is not limited to you or your own local church. While you may be committed to counseling in your local church, it doesn’t mean that your counseling has to be limited to the resources in your particular church. There are resources within the broader body of Christ which include services like counseling, crisis pregnancy assistance, food and clothing assistance to name a few. Sometimes seeking outside help means picking up the phone and calling a skilled, wise counselor who has a lot of experience and case wisdom. You may want to tag-team with someone. You may seek the help and services of a good physician or psychiatrist. In order to do this well, you have to do your homework and ask some basic questions about the approach.

Here are some questions to ask as you determine with whom you will work:

• Will they work with your church to provide the best help possible which will include the resources within your local church?
• What model of counseling is foundational to the way this person provides care? Is it compatible with your church's view of how people grow and change? If not, to what degree?
• Do they see the benefits and necessity of the normal means of grace in a person’s life?
• How much, if any, does Scripture inform their view of the person, their problems and the change process?
• Do they give proper emphasis to a person’s physiological, sociological and historical influences without overlooking the central importance of the spiritual/theological motivations?

As you seek to help people when the problems are more acute and challenge your own experience, it is a mark of wisdom and love to seek outside counsel from trusted people.

Copyright © 2014 Timothy S. Lane. All rights reserved.

When Should A Church Seek Outside Help?

Is it Ever Appropriate for a Church to Outsource Counseling?

You have been there. A person who is really struggling with something wants you to help. You meet with them and they begin to tell their story. At some point, you feel overwhelmed. You do what anyone would do. If you are not on staff at the church, you call one of the pastors who might be able to help. You meet with the pastor of care and he feels overwhelmed, too. What do you do? As important as it is for the local church to have a robust discipling and counseling ministry in place, there are times when you need to get help from someone who has much more experience and training. Here are a few guidelines to keep in mind as you reach out beyond your particular local church.

•    Seek Outside Help If Someone’s Life is in Danger

The most obvious time to refer is when someone is threatening their own life or the life of another person. Suicide, domestic violence, and situations like this require immediate intervention by professionals. Allowing the civil authorities to intervene in the midst of a crisis can be a very loving thing to do. Because of God’s common grace, these organizations are an appropriate place to turn for help in times of crisis. 

Even then, your care of the person is just beginning. Eventually they will be released from the hospital or care facility and your work with them begins anew. Depending on how long they have been under the oversight of the institution, the likelihood of them being persuaded by a diagnosis and cure that are not fully and robustly rooted in a Christian vision of change increases.

•    Seek Outside Help When it Involves Potential Criminal Activity

It should go without saying, but whenever you suspect that a law has been broken, you should involve the civil authorities. In the event that you have an alleged case of sexual abuse, the local civil authorities should be notified. If someone confesses to you that they have committed a crime, you should assist that person tp report themselves to the proper authorities.

Every church should have all of this contact information available in the event of a crisis. You may want to consider having a representative from the police, local hospital, domestic violence shelter, someone who is equipped to assess suicidal behavior and any other professional to train the staff and officers of a church. Whatever you do, have a plan in place to handle these intense opportunities for ministry.

When a church shows that they are prepared to handle these kinds of situations, it is communicating that they are willing and able to wisely engage human sin and suffering at every level. The church truly is for everyone. At least, it should be.

Copyright © 2014 Timothy S. Lane. All rights reserved.

Will Counseling Make a Church Turn Inward?

What do counseling and evangelism have in common? What do counseling and community have in common? Have you ever put them together? At first glance, it would seem that the two pairings are awkward at best. But stop for a minute and consider how a local church that takes counseling seriously actually does a better job of reaching non-believers as well as build community.

Counseling and Evangelism

How has the church historically persuaded the surrounding culture of the truth of the Scriptures? If you know your church history, it has largely happened when people’s lives were changed so much by the grace of God that others could not dismiss those who were changed. Nor could they as easily dismiss the truth claims that transformed them. There has been much discussion about modernity, post-modernity and the apologetic challenge this raises for the church. In a post-modern climate, modern notions of rational categories of truth and error, right and wrong, good and bad have been abandoned. Those belong to the day when the majority culture imposed its meta-narrative on the minority culture. Since this led to oppression, it was necessary to rule out any claims to absolute truth. This is the context in which we live. It is going to take much more than logical arguments to convince people of the truth of the Christian faith.

When a church counsels, it is saying more than the Bible is true; it is saying that the God of the Bible is real. He comes to change lives, families, communities, cultures and the entire cosmos. You can actually see those changes! When a church counsels, it is engaging in one of the most important apologetic tasks it can engage in. It is saying, “We will not simply proclaim the truth, we will demonstrate the truth in the way we live and in the visible proof of lives changed.”

Talk to any church that takes counseling seriously and they will attest to the fact that they reach non-believers naturally because they are addressing the problems they struggle with in their daily lives. The truth changes them and they come to embrace the truth!

Counseling and Community

We don’t often think of the word community when we hear the word “counseling”. The word “counseling” evokes images of conversations between two people behind closed doors where no one else can listen. We think “confidentiality”. While we would not want to diminish the need to handle personal information and conversations with great care and wisdom, a church that counsels is actually a vibrant community. 

Paul, in Colossians 3:16 says, “let the word of Christ dwell in you richly as you teach and admonish one another with all wisdom.” This passage is speaking of a vibrant congregation where brothers and sisters in Christ are counseling one another in the context of daily life as they grow as a community. This does not preclude more personal, confidential contexts for counsel. It does emphasize the communal nature of “one-anothering” ministry.

When a church counsels, it becomes the first place, not the last place that people think about when they need help. How biblical and yet how radical for people to think of the church in that way!

Copyright © 2014 Timothy S. Lane. All rights reserved.

Should the Church do Counseling?

In my travels over the past 12 years (and 15 years of campus and pastoral ministry before that), I have had the privilege of talking with countless pastors. Given my obvious interest in pastoral care, I regularly get asked a simple but basic question from people in ministry. It is then followed by an interesting statement. “Should I really try to “counsel” people or should I find someone who is an expert to whom I might send people for help?” “After all, I wasn’t trained in counseling in seminary.”

Why should a local church and its leaders seek to incorporate counseling within the context of the local church? It seems like a major distraction from the more important matters of church life and mission. Won’t counseling distract the church from being truly missional? Might it move the church to become insular and self-focused? Shouldn’t counseling be left to professionals who are highly trained to deal with people’s problems?

These are all good questions that deserve an answer. Here are some reasons a church should counsel:

• Before we begin, we need to define our terms. The word “counseling” is a very distracting word. For the past 100 years, it is a word that has been associated with secular therapy and highly trained/skilled experts with degrees. They are also governed by state and national agencies that insure “best practices” in the helping professions. Unfortunately, the church has not engaged the "soft sciences" as it should have. Still, the word “counsel” is a word that is found all throughout the Bible. Just take Psalm 1:1-2 for instance. Notice the usage of the word “counsel”;

Blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked…But his delight is in the law of the Lord…

Other translations use the word “advice” for the word “counsel”. In other words, the concept of counseling or giving advice is as old as the human race. We are meaning makers and meaning seekers. We need advice and we offer advice. If this is an aspect of being made in God’s image, it would follow that God is very concerned about what we refer to as “counseling” or giving advice. In Psalm 1, the distinction is drawn quite starkly. One is often giving or receiving good or bad advice. In light of this Psalm alone, it is imperative that the church be in the business of “counseling.”

• As Christians, we are on a mission. In John 17:18, Jesus says, ‘As you sent me into the world, I have sent them into the world.” Jesus came on a courageous mission of compassion to rescue us from ourselves and to restore all things. He did this as the incarnate Son of God. He did not preach a message from heaven but instead “became like us in every way” (Hebrews 2:17) though without sin. When a church commits to counsel people, they are saying that they are willing to get down in the trenches of daily life and love people with the redemptive compassion of the Incarnate One. They are saying that good preaching, as important as it is, is just the beginning of ministry of the Word not the beginning and end. Ministry of the Word that does not connect at the level of people’s sins and sufferings in a rich and meaningful way is insufficient. It fails to fully display the amazing compassion of the God of Scripture. A church should counsel if it wants to demonstrate the compassion of Father, Son and Spirit.

While different messages for change and human flourishing abound, the church must speak and demonstrate the power of the Gospel as it addresses issues endemic to the human condition.

Copyright © 2014 Timothy S. Lane. All rights reserved.